Awakened Beings
by Kamui Senketsu
Summary: Someone took her. No it wasn't Danzo, no it wasn't Orochimaru, and no it wasn't Madara. It was the background specter that watched, the entity which uttered no noise, the mad man with the body of unblinking eyes that saw everything. Warning: Dark themes, blood/gore, violence, experimentation, foul language, and character death. Bloodline FemNaruto. Possible Spoliers. AU. ON HOLD.
1. Into The Night

**This story's gonna be dark. But you probably already knew that. *smiles***

 **I don't own Naruto, thank god.**

* * *

It was in the dead of night, and the silence was eeriness at its highest caliber.

The moon was full, a bloody red sphere that illuminated the clouds drifting across the darkened sky. One child walked through the forests, oblivious to the ominous atmosphere of the night. She had spent much too long in the training grounds, trying and failing again and again to produce a fruitful bunshin after she made herself a laughingstock earlier that day in class. She had tired herself out so much that she'd passed out, only to wake several hours after dark and rush home.

Jiji had warned her that it was dangerous for a little seven year old to be wandering around after dark. She tried to keep herself calm, as it certainly hadn't been the first time that she'd stayed out late, being the plotting prankster that she was.

Reaching the ends of the training grounds, she stopped in her tracks, giving a short and startled shriek when someone fell from the trees above, the hooded black cloak they wore barely disturbed as they descended.

"W-who are you!?" She stuttered, voice shrill with fear.

The cloaked figure was tall, looming over her cowering form. This cloaked person was nothing like the robed Anbu that Jiji sometimes sent to retrieve her after a particularly insolent prank. No… there was something absolutely chilling about this person's presence.

"What's this?" The figure intoned, voice revealing them as male. "This chakra… hidden and locked away so tightly beneath the skin you wear."

The girl took a step back, growing more and more uncomfortable with each passing moment.

"One would think that the Anbu would insure the child with the Kyuubi sealed within them is safely tucked away on such a day."

Blonde brows furrowed in question. She had no idea what he was talking about. Who was this man? Why was he talking about the demon that the Yondaime had defeated on her birthday?

"I was simply observing." The man continued in his emotionless tones. "The Uchiha clan fell today, and I could not help but step in and collect a few stray subjects for my own objectives."

Again the girl stepped back, muscles strung taught.

"I was simply about to leave, and take my newly collected subjects with me. But since I have stumbled upon such an interesting specimen, I see no reason to let you escape."

Needing no further prompting, she turned finally to run, ignoring the growing fear that had nearly paralyzed her moments before.

She slammed into the identically cloaked form that had been waiting behind her, tripping over and falling on her bottom.

"H-hey!" She yelled. "Back off man!"

"Do not resist child." He spoke with the same voice as the other man. "This will only take a moment."

"No!" She scrambled backwards, tripping over her feet as she got up to flee, but four more cloaked figures rained down from the surrounding trees, one of them swiftly catching her arm.

She yanked back to no avail, punching and kicking at him with all her might.

"Let _go_ of me!" She screamed, her eyes stinging as they welled with tears. "Let go I said!"

Another moved up behind her, a senbon twinkling under the moonlight as he pulled it from somewhere within his robes.

The figure holding her grabbed her other arm so that she would stop assaulting him, but that just made her kick and scream harder.

"Stop resisting." Another figure grabbed her hair and wrenched her head back, making her cry out in pain.

The hand with a vice grip in her tufts of sunshine hair held her still, forcing her to stare helplessly up into the trees surrounded by night.

Before she could begin screaming again, the one with the senbon stepped closer, his arm blurring as he sent the small weapon flying with frightening precision.

The girl felt a prick in the side of her neck, and despite her vehement protests, her body sagged, drool trickling out of the corner of her mouth as her muscles completely fell from under her control.

The one holding her arms released her as she fell slack, the other with his fist in her hair following his example, leaving her to crumble to the grassy ground.

She couldn't feel anything. She was completely awake, but it was like her body was asleep, even if her mind was not. As she lied there crumpled on the ground, numb to all sensation, tears leaked out of her wide unblinking eyes, like the corpse of a person whose mind had yet to die.

Her fear fluttering heartbeat slowly lulled down to a calm that she didn't feel, and her consciousness faded to something between sleep and wakefulness.

"Your orders Master?" One of the figures inquired.

"Summon a coffin and seal her within it." Came the reply. "She is in a death like state, yes?"

"Hai, Master."

"Good, the coffin should have recuperating seals on it like the rest of the coffins for the subjects I have collected today. It will allow her to recover more quickly. The seals will only break when she is restored to full health."

"Hai Master."

One of the identical cloaked figures stepped forward, completing a series of handseals much too fast to track before stooping low and smacking his hands against the earth. He stepped back as smoke erupted from the grass, clearing to reveal a barrel-like coffin made of pale wooden planks, a thick white rope wrapped around its circumference. There were blood red insignias scrawled down the pale wood of the coffin all around it, and they glowed slightly in the surrounding darkness.

The very same figure that had held her arms scooped her up and walked over, depositing her into the coffin after pulling the needle from her neck, fastening on an equally wooden lid. The little girl closed her eyes, not wanting to stare into the inclosed darkness of her coffin.

Outside, the summoner of the barrel wove through the handseals snake and tiger before clapping his hands together, causing the symbols on the coffin to glow brighter and then turn black, signifying that the coffin was locked.

"Let us go." The leader intoned, stepping forward, before he leapt up, leaving behind a black blur that faded like a ghost in the night.

His followers leapt up as well, one lagging slightly to pick up the coffin that held the little girl sealed tightly within it. The figure holding the coffin wrapped his arms around it and vaulted himself up into the night.

That was the last day that Konoha would see Naruto Uzumaki for many moons.

* * *

 _"Every ending is a beginning. We just don't know it at the time."_

 _-Mitch Albom_

* * *

 **Here we go you guys. You ready for this? I'm excited to share this one with you.**


	2. The Basement

**I don't own Naruto.**

* * *

She roused slowly, feeling groggy and uncomfortably stiff in her joints.

With a gasp she realized she was in a fetal position on her right side, and that it was darker than she had ever remembered being possible.

"W-what the?" She stuttered, hair raising terror roaring through her body. "What's going on!"

Reaching out, her hand met resistance, something that felt like polished wood. She tried to unfold, but there wasn't enough room for her to straighten out completely, and the thing she was in felt round on its sides. Panic made her irrational, and she began to flail as much as the enclosed space would allow her to, pounding her hands frantically against the wood in front of her, screaming a mantra of 'Let me out!'

"HEY!" A hoarse voice pierced through her manic fear.

She froze, eyes widening uselessly in the inclosed black around her.

"Is somebody out there?" She called, breath escaping her in short fearful bursts. "Can you help me? Please let me out!"

"First calm down." The voice returned, muffled due to her location. The person sounded like they were hoarse from yelling themself. "What's the last thing you remember?"

 _"Haha, Naruto, you're such a loser!"_

 _"I'll show you! I'm gonna be the Hokage! Just you wait!"_

 _"Maybe if you ever learn how to do a real bunshin!"_

 _"Shut up. I will be Hokage...!"_

Naruto paused, flashes of being laughed at and storming off to the training grounds after school flaring up. She remembered waking up after exhausting herself and that it was past sundown. And then…

 _'And then…!'_

 _Being grabbed, her scalp pulling, hair nearly being ripped from the roots as she was held still-a prick at her neck-becoming a prisoner in her own body-being shoved into a box for dead people..._

"NO!" Naruto yelled, shaking her head as tears sprang into her eyes.

It couldn't be true. Those guys couldn't have taken her, Jiji would never let them!

But Jiji hadn't even known she was being taken, part of her mind reminded her. Of course he'd stop the cloaked men if he had known, but nobody had stopped them, and because she was still in the coffin, Naruto could only assume that the men had succeeded in taking her.

"So you remember now huh?" The voice outside called. "Good, then you know that yelling is not going to be very useful for you at this point."

Naruto whimpered, curling in on herself as tears poured out of her eyes.

 _'I want to go home.'_ She thought miserably. _'I want my Jiji…'_

"Hey kid, you still with me?" The muffled voice called.

"Y-yes." She returned, voice warped with tears.

"Alright," The voice said. "Now listen to me okay? Don't scream. That'll just make them come down here to sedate you. It's been done enough times to the guy who used to be in the cell across from me for me to know that."

There were cells out there? Where was she? A jail of some sort? What had happened? What had she done?

"Used to?" She echoed, hesitant.

"As far as I know, he broke and he's dead."

Her blood chilled in her veins. Broke? What part of him had broken? What kind of terrible place was she in? What was she going to do?

 _'I want to go home…'_ She thought miserably.

"I'm not going to lie to you, and tell you that it's going to be alright." The voice went on, becoming grim. "These people, they don't care about anything but what they want, and they have no problem hurting people to get it. The only thing I can say for sure is that they don't want you dead, because they took you. But I can't say that that's a good thing, because keeping you alive down here means they have every intention to hurt you to get what they want."

Hurt her? Like how? Why?

 _'What did I ever do to them?'_ Naruto thought despaired.

"I doubt you did anything." The voice spoke, startling her. "You sound like just a kid. I bet you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time and caught their leader's interest."

Had she said that out loud? Well, it didn't matter. Nothing did... Except getting away. She had to get out, far far away from the freaks that had grabbed her. She didn't want to wait around and see how they'd hurt her.

"You're not going to get away." The voice said, sounding resigned and apologetic all at once. "At least not like you are now. None of us can get away. You just… you just have to take it for now."

"So you want me to give up?" Naruto screeched, suddenly enraged. "Like you? You think I just wanna wait until they come to hurt me? I'm not gonna do that! I'm not stupid! I'm getting out of here!"

She didn't know how, but by god she would do it. She was not going to let the cloaked freaks hurt her. She wasn't.

"You'll start singing a different tune once _he_ gets his hands on you," The voice said cynically. "They all do. Hell, even I did."

"Well it's a good thing I'm me and not you, huh mister?" Naruto sneered back.

The voice just chuckled helplessly, before dissolving into fitful coughs.

"It's really going to suck when they get their hands on you kid." The voice said. "You've got spirit."

The little blonde shivered, the anger she had momentarily felt for the voice wanning to a sense of powerlessness. She knew she wasn't actually going to get away. She couldn't even escape when she was in the "safety" of her own village. So of course Naruto knew she wasn't going to somehow miraculously escape in unknown territory. Despite what people said and thought, she wasn't an idiot, especially when it counted.

The blonde had never even been out of the village. Even if she somehow escaped, how would she even get home before they caught her again?

Heavy tears poured endlessly down her face, chilling on her cheeks.

"What're they gonna do to me?" She sobbed, curling into a little shivering ball.

"I don't know." The voice said sadly. "It's a little different for everyone down here."

There were more people? Those freaks had taken more people? How could they get away with that? How had no one caught them? Did people know that there were people to catch? Did people even want to catch them?

After all, Naruto herself was a freak. Almost nobody liked her, except for her Jiji and sometimes Iruka-sensei. But if the others knew that people who wanted to hurt her had taken her, would they even care to look? They'd probably be glad she was gone. They'd probably say good riddance.

And somehow that thought made everything so much worse.

She cried even harder, until she was short of breath and her stomach ached from her wracking sobs.

After a long while, Naruto's tears ceased their seemingly endless flow, and she was left still afraid and uncertain of what would happen, but felt oddly centered after breaking down.

"You calm down a little?" The voice called.

"Y-yes…" Naruto croaked.

"Okay good." The voice returned. "Now I'm gonna tell you how to get out of your coffin, but know that they're already aware that you're awake. So they may be coming for you very soon."

The panic returned with a dizzying vengeance, and Naruto was paralyzed.

"Now don't do that," The voice placated. "It's not going to do you any good. Try to calm down. Deep breaths alright?"

She tried to follow the voice's instructions, breathing deeply through her nose and exhaling a moment afterwards, doing this several times until she lulled her heart down into a normal rhythm.

"You gather yourself?" The voice came again.

"Yes…" The blonde rasped.

"Alright, okay. Adjust yourself so that your feet are placed against the lid of the coffin." The voice instructed. "It's open, but it's a little tight, so you need the force of a kick to get it to come off."

"O-okay." Naruto stuttered, doing as she was told with a few grunts and honest effort. "Okay mister I did it."

"Good." The voice said. "Just give a good kick. You sound a little young, so it might take a few tries."

Naruto didn't answer, instead focusing on the feeling of her sandals resting flat against the wooden underside of her prison's lid. Pulling her knees in close, she kicked out with all her might, feeling a little give, the soles of her feet stinging even with the protection of her sandals.

"That sounded good." The voice encouraged. "Another one."

Naruto grunted as she repeated the same process, feeling and hearing the lid jarr up a little.

"Last one." The voice rasped.

Naruto gave a little warcry and kicked up and out one last time, the lid of her coffin flying off and somewhere unseen before clattering down onto something that sounded like stone.

"Good job!" The voice exclaimed, falling into another fit of painful sounding coughs.

The stale atmosphere of the coffin was syphoned out by damp air, and the muffled barrier it'd had around her disappeared.

"Now," The voice croaked, sounding slightly thick in a wet sort of way. "You'll be out of the coffin, but when you get out… don't get excited. You're still in a cell. The one to the left of mine and across from someone else's. It's pretty dark down here, and the only light comes from a lantern that's down the hall. I can feel the light on my face when they drag me back and forth through the hall."

Naruto huffed slightly in exertion, struggling to right herself so that she was in a crouching position in the coffin.

She stood up, her knees popping in disuse, making her wince and buckle slightly. Her hands flew up, taking hold of the rim of her coffin, trembling with effort and she heaved herself up. Her gut connected to the edge of the coffin and she fell forward, resting heavily against the rim of the wooden cylinder, her long blonde mane spilling around her head.

"Sounds like you're standing." The stranger observed, no longer muffled, his voice standing stark against the surrounding and eerie silence. "Look around and take note of the place you're in. Unfortunately, you'll be here a while."

Naruto caught her breath, finally straightening herself out, hands still resting gently on the edge of her coffin.

As the voice had warned, she was in a cell. It was pretty dark, but she still had to squint slightly, as it was noticeably brighter than the inside of the coffin. The cell was box shaped, and rather spacious, made almost completely of stone, save for the ominous black metal bars that stretched from wall to wall from the front of her cell, the spaces just big enough that Naruto would be able to reach through them, but not past her shoulder. Outside she could see a cell parallel to her own, but it was empty, the bars left agape.

She could see shadows flickering against the stone floor, telling her that somewhere out of her line of sight to the left there was a lantern or a candle meant for light. But it was dim, and the light it brought was so pitiful that everything looked as if they were muted tones of grey or blue, including her skin.

Behind Naruto was a wall that held shackles and chains, and she told herself with a shiver that she wasn't going to do anything that would make them chain her up back there. To her right was a blank stone wall. That was the wall that separated her from the owner of the voice.

The blonde looked to the left of her cell, mortified to find a toilet protruding from the wall, as well as a metal mounting that held a roll of toilet paper. There was also a large metal bucket near the toilet.

"A bucket…?" Naruto muttered.

"It's to vomit in." The voice informed her. "It's also bolted to the floor so you can't use it as a weapon."

 _'How the heck do they empty it if it's stuck to the floor…?'_

"I would just throw up in the toilet if I were you." The voice came again. "The guy across from me learned the hard way that the smell of rotting vomit only made him want to vomit even more. Thankfully, when he disappeared one of _his_ minions came down here, unbolted the bucket, and took it away."

"'His'? Who is 'he'?" Naruto asked, a sense of foreboding festering inside of her.

"He's the leader." The voice explained. "He's the one that conducts all of the experiments, and _they_ follow his every whim. No one here that isn't a prisoner has a conscience. They're all sociopaths."

"What's that?" Naruto asked, trembling.

"Sorry, I forgot you're a kid. Basically it's someone who doesn't feel bad for any of the wrong they do or the hurt they cause people. They also tend to do things on their own because they have no true desire to be social."

"Oh." Naruto whispered, looking down. She didn't completely get it, but she understood that the people they were discussing didn't feel bad for doing wrong. They didn't care about doing wrong.

 _'How could there actually be people like that?'_ Naruto didn't understand. She didn't understand anything.

"I want to be angry that those bastards actually took a kid, but I'm not even surprised. I'm just… disgusted." The voice rasped. "And sorry. I'm so sorry you ended up here kid."

Naruto shook her head.

"I'm sorry that anyone ended up here." She murmured, fresh tears blurring her eyes.

She'd give anything to see her Jiji again.

"You're a good kid." The voice whispered. "And that… that makes it worse."

Naruto dragged in a shuddering breath, finally moving to clumsily climb out of her coffin. With a small yelp she landed in a heap on her side, the breath knocked out of her and her shoulder panging with a flare of pain.

"Hey, are you alright?" The voice called, concerned.

"Y-yes I'm fine." Naruto coughed, wincing. "I just… I got all the way out of the coffin-thingy and fell."

"Oh okay."

Naruto rolled onto her stomach and used her hands to push herself up fully, arms quaking slightly as she still felt a little faint. She had no idea how long she had been asleep, but she had been out of it long enough for her limbs to grow a little weak from being in the same tight position.

Sitting on her knees, Naruto adjusted herself until she was on her bottom, turning so that she could lean her back against the bulky, cylindrical coffin behind her.

With a sigh, she leaned her head back so that she could look up at the ceiling, her pupils dilating in terror at the sight that greeted her.

She screamed before she could stop herself.

"What?" The voice croaked, alarmed. "What happened!?"

"T-there's something in here with me!" Naruto stuttered, scrambling up and clumsily making her way to the right wall that separated her from the helpful stranger.

She pressed her back uselessly against the wall as the thing detached itself from the ceiling, landing in front of her coffin with no audible sound. It was small, maybe about a foot tall. And looked to be a blob of pale flesh with four small stump-like limbs. It had an askew mouth with yellowing teeth, an uncentered nose, and a large bloody red eye that was rimmed by stressed, raised pink scar tissue.

The large unblinking eye stared at Naruto, sending her into a fit of trembling. Around the pupil were what appeared to be black tomoe, and there was something absolutely ominous about the thing's eye alone. It seemed as if it was taking note of everything it saw...

"What is it?" The voice demanded. "What's happening?"

"I-it's not doing anything…" Naruto stuttered, watching the creepy blob watch her with that lopsided, half smirking mouth. "It's j-just staring."

"What is it?" The voice asked.

"I dunno," Naruto admitted, completely unsettled as the thing just kept watching her. "It's kinda small. It only has one eye. It's got a messed up nose and a big mouth."

"That's strange." The voice mused. "But then again, I can sense a small presence in here with me too."

"Huh?" Naruto breathed, brows furrowing.

"I'm blind kid." The voice revealed. "I don't have any eyes. I lost one, and I gave the other one away before I got here."

Naruto shivered.

How did someone lose an eye? And why would they give the only one they had left away?

"It's eye is kinda funny…" Naruto admitted, somehow managing to calm her breathing.

"How so?"

"It's… it's red." She began describing. "And there's three little black dots around the middle."

The voice cursed.

"So that's it. He's watching us through those things. But where did he get so many sharingan?"

"What?" Naruto muttered. "What are you talking about mister?"

"Nothing." The voice lied. "Don't worry. Just know that the thing in there with you won't hurt you. It's just there to watch you. I've got one in here with me as well."

"I don't care if it won't hurt me." Naruto huffed. "It's creepy and won't stop freaking staring!"

Feeling a flare of temper, Naruto was moving before she even knew what she intended to do, yanking off one of her sandals viciously, and chucking it at the mysterious creature.

The fleshy blob gave a small, unearthly screech when her shoe slammed into its eye, sending it flying across the cell.

The blonde froze, blood nearly freezing within her.

 _'What did I just…'_

"Kid what did you do?" The voice yelped.

"I-I didn't mean to!" Naruto sputtered. "I-it just wouldn't stop staring at me! I… I threw my sandal at it!"

"No no, it's okay. I understand." The voice assured her. "You were scared, a lot of people lash out when they're afraid."

Naruto nodded, knowing that the man behind the wall couldn't see it.

"O-okay…"

She lowered herself onto her side, turning around so that her back was to the one eyed creature that had found its feet again.

She didn't turn to see what it was doing, and she wondered if she was just imagining the feeling of its eye staring into her stiff back. The blonde girl opened her eyes, not realizing that she had closed them, alarmed to find a small hole across from her face marring the stone wall of her cell. It was large enough to fit her arm in, and probably someone's who was twice her size.

"Hey mister, there's a hole in the wall."

"I know," He murmured, his raspy voice sounding closer somehow. "I'm guessing somehow the people who were in these cells before us dug this hole to each other."

Naruto didn't want to think about what had happened to the people that had been in the cells before them.

"Hey mister, could you… could you…" She trailed off, a little ashamed despite the situation.

Fortunately the little blonde didn't have to say anything else, for she heard shuffling through the hole with her keen ears, and then she could see something, something moving carefully at the other end of the hole.

Again, her eyes stung, and she felt a thickness inside her throat. Naruto shuffled up a little, so that she could slide her hand and then her arm through the hole.

She felt small pebbles and debris scrape her arm as she did this, but she continued to push her arm through the breach, undeterred.

Soon, her fingers brushed something warm, a little callused, but alive and comforting. Undoubtedly comforting. It was the hand of the blind man at the other side of her cell wall.

Naruto gave a hitching breath, pushing herself closer, so that she could wrap her noticeably smaller middle and index fingers around his. It was startling how such small contact with an equally unfortunate stranger could be so calming. She was still afraid, and she doubted things would be alright, but this… this made it just a tiny bit better. Not okay, but better.

Before the seven year old could muse on whether or not feeling that way was selfish or wrong, the sound of a door being wrenched open made her stiffen.

Both Naruto and the owner of the helpful voice snatched their hands back, Naruto moving so clumsily that she left herself with lazily oozing scratches.

The sound of stumbling footsteps had her bolting upright, leaning her back against the wall, half imagining the owner of the voice doing the same thing and half hoping that she would be left in her cell for just a little bit longer.

Naruto peered through the flickering darkness outside her cell, blue eyes going wide at the sight of a tall man half ushering, half dragging a stumbling older woman into the hallway that bisected the cells.

The man had pale, nearly white skin, his eyes were large, set into black rimmed lids, and bearing the same disturbing red and black design as the blob that was in her cell. He had hair that was pale, just a little darker than his skin, short and slicked back, gathered into a swoop like point at the back of his head. He stopped at the cell across from Naruto's and tossed in the willowy woman that he was dragging along. She tried to catch herself, but eventually crumbled onto her side.

She lied gasping on the floor, her mouth stained with a thick metallic red that put a fresh chill in Naruto's veins. The woman's hair was a deep violet, cropped unevenly short to her head, probably against her will, traces of lavender in it from where she was beginning to go gray. Her eyes had minor wrinkles at the corners of them, and were a milky grey, as if they had been darker a long time ago, but had faded.

Naruto knew that the woman was blind.

 _'Did those freaks blind her?'_ She thought, horrified. _'How could they do that to an old lady?'_

The woman being locked into the cell across from Naruto's was wearing muted scrubs, her bare arms and legs covered in patchwork stitching from the things that the freaks had done to her.

And suddenly, the black garbed freak turned to stare directly at Naruto. She froze. She was too afraid to even tremble.

She could barely see his mouth move as he spoke behind the high collar of his shirt.

"You, child." He intoned, his voice the same as she remembered. The same heartless monotone of every last one of the freaks that had helped kidnap her. "Master has instructed me to fetch you."

"NO!" Naruto yelled, scrambling back and shaking her head back and forth.

The solemn red eyed man took a step towards her cage.

"No go away! Leave me alone!" Naruto begged. "Just leave me alone!"

"Kid…"

Naruto, without thinking clambered down to lie on her stomach, so that she could speak directly into the hole and to the helpful stranger.

"I don't want them to take me mister." She whimpered. "I don't want to go!"

"I know you don't kid." The voice murmured. "I know you don't. But… right now, that's just how it is. So don't cry. Don't let them control you so easily, be smart and don't give them a reason to hurt you any worse. Because they're gonna hurt you, but you have to be stronger than what they do."

Naruto was beginning to hyperventilate, but the voice of the man helped her catch her breath.

"I'm scared…" She whispered. "I want to go home…"

"I know." The voice whispered back. "I know."

Before she could say anything, before she could think to say anything, her right arm was seized and she was yanked to a standing position. She was a little off centered because her left sandal was still lying across the room, but the freak wasn't giving her any real time to gather herself before he began moving.

Naruto wanted to fight. She wanted to kick and scream and maybe even curse as she was dragged out of her cell. But she just sort of fell limp, and the red eyed man didn't seem to care, he just continued to drag her on, out of the cell she hadn't heard him unlock or enter.

He pulled her into the hall with flickering light and turned left. The sole of her bare foot was cold against the lifeless stone floor.

A door that was left ajar came into view, a lantern lit with a small blue flame mounted above it. Behind the steel bolted door, was a stone staircase that led up into the unknown.

Naruto didn't know that she could have wanted to stay down there, in what appeared to be a basement of cells. But she knew the cells were better than the unknown that waited for her up those shadowed steps.

The man with the merciless grip on her arm began pulling her up the dark staircase, and she stumbled to keep up with his long, soundless stride.

Well, it was only a matter of time before she knew the answer to a question she had asked the voice.

Naruto would certainly find out what was going to happen to her.

* * *

 _"If you're in pitch blackness, all you can do is sit tight until your eyes get used to the dark."_

 _-Haruki Murakami_

* * *

 **I felt like I was writing the intro to a really messed up video game lol. But beware, because I'm only getting started.**


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